Arrayed among the more traditional sumi ink works at the Chinese Culture Foundation's group show, "The Moment for Ink," Toyin Odutola's dark, textured ballpoint-ink-and-marker drawings pop - in their intensity, richness and blackness. The very qualities of the work of the Nigerian-born artist, who is often slotted into shows as an African American woman, make this exhibition a special one for her.

"Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness and your black presence. What I like about this show is that I felt free from that blackness and I could really exploit the pen and do crazy patterns and have that be the focal point of it," says Odutola, 27, who graduated from California College of the Arts last year. "I'm celebrating the ink and what it can do and transforming what it can be."

"It's also nice to have something that came with such a rich history with Chinese literati and the rich history of pen ink and how it's used as a tag in China," adds Odutola, who is now working in Alabama on her May solo show for Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City. "In the fine art world in America, you don't see a lot of pen ink unless it's graphic novels."

The mangas that once inspired Odutola are far away: The self-portraits she made for the exhibit are both eerily anatomical and strangely futuristic, as if she had traced the rhythmic weave of musculature beneath her skin. In "No Difference at All," a figure skeptically regards the viewer from beneath her lids, and in "Whenever the Occasion Arises," she peers to the side, the whites of her eyes satiny and the almost bronze pen strokes resembling those of a tress-obsessed Arcimboldo.

"It's kind of a language I've developed over time that's basically breaking up the face into components and planes," Odutola says of her work. "Inside each plane, I draw gradation marks, and when planes come together, they form sinews, a hairlike weave that's like a landscape of the face."

She ventures a comparison to the portrait deconstructions of Chuck Close: "It's an abstraction that happens from looking really hard and long at a face," she says. "I hope that, looking at these portraits, you'll see a person underneath that mark making."